This Advertisement is Perfect*

Posted by Cap on June 27, 2006 |

*But only when pigs fly.

I always wonder why companies bother to spend the time on an advertisement, only to ruin it with an asterisk. Whatever the actual footnote may be, just by having that little asterisk in the ad will make the message less effective.

Take one of the latest Apple commercial for example. The simple 30 second ad tells you that the latest Intel-based Mac can run Windows software. Cool, that’s good to know.

But then they had to go and throw in an asterisk.

And you know, the ad is still true—but then there’s that footnote. There’s that exception.

What we’ve just pitched to you is true—but you will of course need this and that.

They had 19 other reasons why you’ll love a Mac, plenty of them convincing; but they had to go and pick one that needed an asterisk.

I dunno… I don’t think this falls into the same category as the credit card ads you’ve previously highlighted. This seems like it falls more into the ‘people are stupid, we should warn them’ category of disclaimers, rather than the ‘let’s fool those stupid people’ class.

I would think that most people understand that in order to run Windows on a Mac, you need to actually have Windows installed. Parallels might be a little less intuitive, but it’s hardly requires a stretch of the intellect to understand that running a second OS on top of the current one requires an extra bit of software. (Especially since Boot Camp is also readily available, and free).

For the record, I’m not one of them crazy Apple fanatics who keeps a shrine to Steve jobs in my bathroom – I’ve been an indifferent Windows user for pretty much my entire life. I just don’t find this all that deceitful or manipulative.

yeah you’re right George, that’s exactly what it falls into.. and disclaimers like that ruins the effectiveness of the commercial.

I think I kinda screwed it up with the initial title of the post. I’m just saying that every time I see an asterisk, I’ll be looking specifically on what it says, instead of whatever the actual message of the ad is.

If that asterisk bothers you, have you tried any of the millions of websites that offer FREE* anything (laptops are popular, credit cards second, vacation trips third, but it goes on and on). That damned asterisk means invariably that you have to complete multiple offers, buying several various things that you don’t want or need to get the “FREE*” offer.